Is Touch Rugby League?

As Touch seems to be taking off, its links to rugby league are not often mentioned. The international touch website does not mention the origins of the game.

The Catalan rugbipensador website has a couple of articles on Touch, with a link to the Rugby Union International Board’s promo of a touch event in Bristol. Dennis Coffey , an Australian former union player mentions that it was started by some ‘South Sydney rugby players’. Commentator Chris Rea, not exactly a huge league fan, is clearly not wanting to talk about the links with league.

Does it have limited tackles? I know the Union lot don't play the ball, they just roll it back or step over it

The version i played with the mighty cardiff cavaliers was limited tackles. No kicking, a step over like you say, five metre retreat by the defence and the dummy half would concede possession if tackled. We even used a steeden ball! Great game but knackering. You end up literally chasing the defenders so that you get touched and they fail to make the 5, conceding another set. Old buggers like me get targetted for that. Only passed (tactically speaking) near the opponents line.

PROUD TO BE A MEMBER OF http://www.rugbyleaguecares.org/ and http://www.walesrugb...-wales-for-2013Predictions for the future -Crusaders RL to get a franchise for 2012 onwards -WRONGWidnes Vikings also to get a franchise - RIGHTCrusaders RL to do the double over Widnes and finish five places ahead of them -WRONGWidnes Vikings NOT to dominate rugby league in years to come! STILL TO COME

As Touch seems to be taking off, its links to rugby league are not often mentioned. The international touch website does not mention the origins of the game.

The Catalan rugbipensador website has a couple of articles on Touch, with a link to the Rugby Union International Board’s promo of a touch event in Bristol. Dennis Coffey , an Australian former union player mentions that it was started by some ‘South Sydney rugby players’. Commentator Chris Rea, not exactly a huge league fan, is clearly not wanting to talk about the links with league.

I would suggest that this is a new version of rugby; it's touch, not touch RL or RU, and it is clearly different from both. To be honest I can't see any point in creating barriers by deliberately changing rules or claiming it as 'ours', in any case the game will metamorphose quite naturally, in a way that benefits a non-tackling version of rugby, just as it should do.

Touch wants nothing to do with RL. The game is clearly RL with the physicality and kicking taken out, but it's a different sport in its own right now and there's nothing we can do about it.

But Oztag, or whatever you want to call it, is even closer to RL. And it's maintained its RL links too. Here women play "league tag" alongside the men's RL sides in local competitions. I also went to a junior league carnival today where the bos played RL and the girls played league tag. The CRL has taken ownership of this tag game and is using it to promote RL. There's nothing stopping RL doing this across the board.

THIS IS A COMPLETE LIE. Touch Footy started as a training tool for South Sydney Rugby League. Touch is an off shoot of Rugby League and how dare rugby union come in and claim it as their own. I am here to remind everybody that touch football has never ever been associated with rugby union. It is born and bred from Rugby League just like TAG. Both are non contact forms of RUGBY LEAGUE. All you union fans trying to claim touch, go and tell your ###### somewhere else you pack of liars. I know touch has broken away as its own sport but for union to come out and claim it as its own product is just another lie and a big F U to league in my opinion. The worse thing is all these union tossers around the world will go forth and spread the lie, leaving league fans like myself to try and tell people the truth. So annoyed right now am going to the pub for a beer to calm myself down.

THIS IS A COMPLETE LIE. Touch Footy started as a training tool for South Sydney Rugby League. Touch is an off shoot of Rugby League and how dare rugby union come in and claim it as their own. I am here to remind everybody that touch football has never ever been associated with rugby union. It is born and bred from Rugby League just like TAG. Both are non contact forms of RUGBY LEAGUE. All you union fans trying to claim touch, go and tell your ###### somewhere else you pack of liars. I know touch has broken away as its own sport but for union to come out and claim it as its own product is just another lie and a big F U to league in my opinion. The worse thing is all these union tossers around the world will go forth and spread the lie, leaving league fans like myself to try and tell people the truth. So annoyed right now am going to the pub for a beer to calm myself down.

So the union version (roll the ball back without it touching the foot)is directly copied from Super League.....until the refs clamp down on it, that is.

Training Touch can reduce the risk of injuries in training. In Swindon there is a summer Tag Rugby 'League' but apparently play unlimited tackles & roll the ball between their legs (trying to emulate a 'ruck & maul'?) rather than PTB.

"I've never seen a woman with hairy ears... And I've been to St Helens" - John Bishop

In his book, "The Story of Touch", Bob Dyke (one of the Souths men) points to the playing of touch in front of a 47,000 SCG Grand Final (replay) crowd in 1977, along with a spectacular match a year later between the visiting British Lions RL team and a "Sydney Metropolitan" rep touch team, as the primary impetus for the rapid growth of touch footy in the late 1970s.

Significantly, Dyke also makes the point that touch football's founding purpose was to widen and grow the social and recreational appeal of rugby league.

Touch football was being played in Australia at least 15 years before the Souths initiative. Anyone who suggests touch isn't a modified form of RL is kidding themselves.

The problem for RL is that in the 1980s the game (RL) in Aust failed to recognise that touch was becoming a legitimate and very popular sport in itself, and the opportunity to affiliate new Touch associations into the RL bodies was rejected and/or ignored. So Touch went it alone, and who can blame them now for seeing themselves as an independent sport.

Touch is popular in non-RL states in Australia, but it does little for awareness of the RL brand. It is the same around the world, apart where the RFL is doing some good work recently organising tournaments under its banner etc.

None of the above is to suggest that some obscure informal touch RU didn't exist elsewhere (in NZ & SA) in the 1960s and earlier, but there is no doubt that the sport of touch football that has been taken up across the globe (including by the RFU & IRB) is RL.

Dyke's objective that touch be used as a vehicle for the expansion of RL has obviously failed as few understand the game they are playing is RL.

In the cross code media and public pereceptions war, rugby league seems to be lagging behind in growth and participant numbers at the adult level, yet, how hard is it to merely point out how many are playing touch footy?

And given the physical demands placed on social players under a 10m in RL, the number opting to get their "RL fix" via playing it in the form of touch or OzTag instead, in our modern time poor world, is only going to grow.

The prople who promote touch wisely aligned themselves with union, they made the right choice

Understand what you're alluding too & agree 100% with the point your making.

It's probably more the case that RU is seeking out Touch rather than the other way around.

It's obvious to (almost) everyone that much sport in the 21st century will be in a stream-lined form, and yet while RL evolves down the path of being only a game that fulltime athletes can play, it does nothing (in Aust & NZ at least) to ensure mod/social forms of its game are kept on board.

It's too late anyway - the Touch associations want nothing to do with RL, so RL would have to create yet another variant and this time keep it in the RL brand.

Training Touch can reduce the risk of injuries in training. In Swindon there is a summer Tag Rugby 'League' but apparently play unlimited tackles & roll the ball between their legs (trying to emulate a 'ruck & maul'?) rather than PTB.

unlimited makes no sense, as does the union version ive seen where they pass when tackled. concious effort not to be league like imo. touch logically moves towards league rules and no one i played with seems bothered.

PROUD TO BE A MEMBER OF http://www.rugbyleaguecares.org/ and http://www.walesrugb...-wales-for-2013Predictions for the future -Crusaders RL to get a franchise for 2012 onwards -WRONGWidnes Vikings also to get a franchise - RIGHTCrusaders RL to do the double over Widnes and finish five places ahead of them -WRONGWidnes Vikings NOT to dominate rugby league in years to come! STILL TO COME

It's too late anyway - the Touch associations want nothing to do with RL, so RL would have to create yet another variant and this time keep it in the RL brand.

I don't see why rugby league can't set up a pro touch RL competition, played in summer, to give us the game all year 'round. If the NRL/ARL were smart they could take control of the most popular minimal contact version of the game in one swoop, aligning new leagues with the NSWRL, CRL, QRL etc, all on the back of a televised summer comp which would be heavily branded for rugby league awareness.

If the rules were pure rugby league without contact I really can't imagine the current bastardised form of touch rugby league enduring in the face of the competition.

Touch wants nothing to do with RL. The game is clearly RL with the physicality and kicking taken out, but it's a different sport in its own right now and there's nothing we can do about it.

But Oztag, or whatever you want to call it, is even closer to RL. And it's maintained its RL links too. Here women play "league tag" alongside the men's RL sides in local competitions. I also went to a junior league carnival today where the bos played RL and the girls played league tag. The CRL has taken ownership of this tag game and is using it to promote RL. There's nothing stopping RL doing this across the board.

Speaking of tag, for anyone coming to London for the Challenge Cup final, we are running a tag festival on the Sunday. For more details see here.